I've attached a relatively recent tale of mine
which is about a Chicago bike messenger and her aunt, who is dying of
cancer. I spent the past four years working as a bike
messenger, and have also worked in the health care field with
terminal patients, so this story is quite close to my heart. I
hope you enjoy it.

We gather in front of the Thompson Center, we
messengers, rolling in on racing machines, mountain bikes, and
beaters pieced together in garages and basements. The elite among us
ride fixed-gear bikes – fixies – with no brakes. I ride a
fixie but, chickenshit that I am, still cling to a front brake. Just
in case. A brakeless bike is cool but the cool don’t always
survive on these streets. My fixie has a name: Pink.

I swoop in under the concrete overhang, hand raised
for high-fives.

“Sonya, a good morning to you.”

This from Jazz Man, biker number seven over at
Cannonball. Low number, been on the scene forever.

“Yo, Dad.”

We slap palms. Jazz Man wears fingerless gloves while
my own hands freeze within huge mitts. Frost clings to his short,
curly beard. The Jazz Man rides a vintage steel Raleigh with a big,
wire basket strapped to the handlebars with strips of leather. His
machine, like himself, is built for heavy loads and the long haul –
not speed. The Jazz Man is beyond elite. The Jazz Man is legend.

I give him a ten-four as I crank some tight
circles. After a good wind-up, I weave through a few peds and hit
Randolph at warp speed. Another call comes in and I key the mike and
answer without slowing. It’s all about flow, now, just keep
moving. I glide to a halt by a bike rack, dismount, and whip the
chain and lock from around my waist, all in a single fluid motion.
Within moments I’m inside the three-eleven and sprinting for
the elevators before security can snag me and demand I.D. A few
seconds saved. Flow.

By the time I exit the three-eleven with package on
board, I’m overheated. The chill air feels good. I unlock the
bike, whip the chain around my waist, and stomp the pedals. Now it
seems strange to see people walking all hunched and bunched against
the cold. In my head I know it’s frigid out, but now that I’ve
warmed up it feels like summer. Why’s everyone so cold?

I stand on the pedals, rocketing east on Wacker. Slow
for the red light, do a tight circle, spot an opening and speed off
again, legs pumping like pistons. I feel superhuman. I love this job.
Later, I will probably decide I hate it. I go back and forth between
loving it and hating it several times a day.

I swoop the corners and dart between trucks. It won’t
be till night that it catches up to me, when I’m drifting off
to sleep and some image – a car door opening or a Yellow Cab
veering – looms in my mind’s eye and I spasm awake. But
for now, I am supremely confident, almost daring The Loop to throw me
its worst.

I grab more orders. My bag fills with envelopes and
odd little packages. Julio and I banter on the radio. I sweat and
have to unzip my jacket to let in cool air. Worst thing you can do is
sweat too much. I see other bikers, but mostly in passing. Jerry,
with Standard Courier. Enigma on his sleek, silver Felt. Nikki toting
her bag with a pastel T-Rex munching a car. Jazz Man pedals down
Wabash, his basket filled with boxes. We nod at one another, or raise
a couple fingers from the handlebars. A lot is said with these
miniscule gestures: stay safe; I’m here for ya; are we crazy or
what?

Early afternoon I get stuck at a freight
elevator on LaSalle, the bane of the messenger’s existence. A
lot of places, they don’t let us go through the front, we gotta
duck around back, check in with security, and scurry through a rat
maze to the freight elevator. I stare at the number lights: 47…
46… Fumble with my clipboard. This thing’s going to take
forever. Julio really will think I’ve fallen asleep.

My cell phone rings. I throw off my bag, dig through
it, find the phone. It’s my Aunt Edie. My finger hovers over
the answer button for several seconds as it rings, rings. Today is
Monday, so it’s my turn to sit with her through the night. It’s
also the day she goes in for chemotherapy. The phone stops ringing
and I toss it back in the bag and close the flap. A couple
maintenance men are standing nearby. I’m sweating and itching
in all my winter clothes and just where is that damn elevator?

The elevator arrives and, from within my bag, my
phone makes those little beeps that let me know a message has been
left. I step in the elevator and scooch to a corner as men bring on
ladders and carts and tools. I’m going to 27. The car descends
to the basement before going up. I want to get my phone but now my
hands are full with hat and mittens and clipboard and pen.

Eventually, I make it out of the LaSalle building but
my momentum, my flow, has disappeared. The cold bites again as sweat
freezes to my body. It feels like I just spent half the day in that
damn building. I’m disoriented and have to remind myself
repeatedly of where I’m headed next. Pink feels sluggish. I
almost hit a pedestrian. I forgot to check my phone message but no
time now, no time. I really hate this job.

I tough it out and, little by little, warm back up.
In a lobby on Dearborn I grab my phone and call voicemail. The only
message my aunt left was about seven seconds of silence. I hang up
and everything feels off kilter. I don’t delete the message.

Orders stop coming in; I concentrate on delivering.
My bag empties. The Loop starts to close down and pedestrians cross
the streets in random patterns. Pink and I have to weave and dodge
like crazy. It suddenly occurs to me it’s almost dark. I drop
my last package, say nighty-night to Julio, jump on the Lake Shore
trail, and head north. Once on the trail, I can pull out the stops
and just fly. No traffic, no intersections, no red lights.

I want to keep riding and never stop, but instead
exit the trail and blast through Boys Town, reaching Edie’s
apartment building in no time. Downstairs, I press the buzzer and
think about the seven seconds of silence on my voicemail and what it
could mean.

“Sonya?”

“It’s me, Auntie.”

She buzzes me up. I heft Pink onto one shoulder
and hoof it to the third floor. I have a key and let myself in,
stashing Pink in the utility room at the entry. Helmet, hat and
mittens go in a milk crate by the door. I kick off my shoes, stick my
cell phone in the charger, toss off my jacket, peel off my wet socks
and toss them on a box.

From around the corner, I see Edie sitting up in bed.
The television is on, the sound turned down. A couple GET WELL SOON
balloons lie here and there, their lift long gone. I stall in the
utility closet as long as possible before stepping into the main
room.

We go through our rituals: I ask how she’s
doing, she says she’s hanging in, we make small talk, I take
her hand in mine. I want to leave and I hate myself for this. She
tells me to have a seat and suddenly my adrenaline runs out,
exhaustion hits, and I drop like a bag of cement onto the recliner
across from the bed.

It’s always the smells that get me. Nobody ever
mentions them, of course. Rotting flesh, puss and I swear I can smell
the chemicals they pump into her. Metals. Edie is surrounded by
books, magazines, food wrappers, water bottles, Kleenex. Her back
rests against one of those pillows people use for sitting up. A
husband pillow, I think it’s called. Knitted afghans are
scattered about. It must be some law that sick people gotta have
these horrid things in their homes. Edie’s bald head somehow
reminds me of an alien. She looks impossibly small and her gaze
shifts idly about and it becomes harder and harder to recall the
person she used to be.

“You don’t have to stay here,” she
says, but this is just another part of our ritual and I follow my
script and tell her I want to stay. I can’t help but glance
toward the utility room at Pink’s front wheel, dripping mud
onto the floor.

Edie has no food preference whatsoever. Pizza,
Chinese, burritos, Thai, it’s all the same to her. I order from
Yeng Ching. General Tsao’s chicken for me, Kung Pao for Edie,
and egg drop soup for us both. At the last second I order crab
rangoons. I stay on the phone as long as possible.

When the food arrives, Edie pokes at the rice,
nibbles a rangoon. I devour everything else, my body absorbing every
iota of protein and carbohydrate it can get. Edie turns the volume up
on the television and the evening crawls by. At ten, I shut off the
lights and slip into the bathroom for a shower. I have clothes
stashed here. After my shower, I slip into some sweats and return to
the recliner and lean back.

Sometime during the night my skin starts to itch. One
of those nasty afghans is draped over me and I throw it off. I never
really sleep at Edie’s, at least not deep. Sometimes she’ll
say my name and my eyes will open and next thing we’re having a
conversation. Or I’ll say something first.

It’s like that now. Dozing, I remember those
seven seconds of silence she left on my voice mail. “You
called,” I say. “Earlier.”

Edie turns her head. There’s a rustling
in the folds of the sheets. It’s her hand trying to push its
way out. It emerges from the covers. I force myself to keep from
pulling my own hand away when she reaches over for it. It’s
like an alien thing. Edie opens her eyes.

“You needn’t come by after today.”

I start to mouth my usual lines – it’s
okay, I like coming here – when she cuts me off.

“Sonja. No. Don’t come back.”

Even as she gasps for breath, her voice has a sharp
edge to it that stops me cold. The hand retreats back under the
covers. Before long, she drifts off but my pulse is pounding.

I sit up in the recliner. Stand. Take a step.
Stop. Another step. Eventually, I make it to the utility room where
Pink is stashed. The poor girl is covered with road salt. My aunt has
a bunch of old-lady tools: needle nose pliers, an ancient Crescent
wrench, some cheap screwdrivers, and a bunch of wrenches with English
sizing: half inch, three eighths, nine sixteenths.

Some years ago, I dyed my hair a bunch of funky
colors. Then one day I looked in a mirror and couldn’t wait to
shave my head. That’s how I’m feeling now about that damn
front brake. It looks like a tumor and I want it off Pink. I peel the
handlebar tape and grab those silly pliers. It takes awhile but I’m
determined. I get the lever off first, then go after the brake
itself. When the operation is complete, I rewrap the handlebars.

I let the brake, cable and lever fall to the floor.
It’s ugly. But Pink has never been sleeker. All smooth lines,
no extra parts, more poem than machine. I step into the kitchen. The
microwave clock tells me it’s 4:20am. I want it to be later. I
think about what my life will be like now, riding with no brakes,
always seeking ways around and through traffic, weaving and dodging
and veering, my senses fixed on high alert. I start to shake. The
stench of flesh and metal has found me again. My throat starts to
close up. I glance over at Edie on the bed, sipping in teaspoons of
breath. I feel lean and tough and oh-so-ashamed.

I run my hands over Pink, pick her up. She’s
light and strong. I’ve never wanted to ride so bad in my life.